CNN: Assange’s refuge in Ecuadorian embassy ‘in jeopardy’. Concern trolling or a genuine warning?

You decide.  But if it’s a genuine warning, why, and who are the ‘multiple sources’ leaking (ha dee ha, ha) the warnings to CNN, and for what reason?  Please share your thoughts.

CNN May 25:

“Julian Assange’s nearly six-year refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London is in danger, opening the WikiLeaks founder to arrest by British authorities and potential extradition to the US, multiple sources with knowledge tell CNN.

While Assange has in the past claimed his position in the embassy was under threat, sources say his current situation is “unusually bad” and that he could leave the embassy “any day now,” either because he will be forced out or made to feel so restricted that he might choose to leave on his own. His position there is “in jeopardy,” one source familiar with the matter said.

Assange’s exit from the embassy could open a new phase for US investigators eager to find out what he knows.

CNN reported in April 2017 that the US has prepared charges to seek the arrest of Assange, who US intelligence agencies believe Russia used as an intermediary to distribute hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential election.”

As to the DNC emails and (iirc) the Podesta emails having been hacked, Craig Murray is adamant about the fact that they were ‘internal leaks’, not from ‘hacks’.  He’d also said that he’d met the leaker in DeeCee, which sort of turned into: Craig Murray was the conduit…or something on a boatload of media sites.   Within that missive from Murray, that claim was obscured, so I went hunting and found this is  pdf Robert Parry (Rest in Power) had put up in June of 21016, ‘A Spy Coup in America?’ in which he’d semi-transcribed Murray’s interview on Scott Horton’s program:

“Reading Between Lines

Though Murray has declined to say exactly what the meeting in the woods was about, he may have been passing along messages about ways to protect the source from possible retaliation, maybe even an extraction plan if the source was in some legal or physical danger.

Murray has disputed a report in London’s Daily Mail that he was receiving a batch of the leaked Democratic emails. “The material, I think, was already safely with WikiLeaks before I got there in September,” Murray said in the interview with Scott Horton. “I had a small role to play.”

Murray also suggested that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.

“The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn’t conclude that they both have the same source,” Murray said. “In both cases we’re talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information.”  Remember also that Assange had broken his rule not to mention sources to say: ‘it wasn’t Russians’, in an attempt to stem the tide of Russiagate.  But back to CNN:

“British authorities have said that they would issue a warrant for Assange’s arrest if he were to leave the embassy. He faces charges in the UK for breach of bail for failing to surrender for extradition to Sweden, a charge a British judge upheld in February despite the fact that Sweden stopped investigating an allegation of rape against Assange in 2017. Swedish prosecutors maintain the right to resume the investigation if Assange leaves the embassy, however.”

As far a I’m concerned, their link about ‘the rape charges in Sweden’ doesn’t tell the whole story, even if the timelines get might confusing given the sources of the reporting.  From justice4assange #REF: ‘How did the Swedish matter end?’, exposing the facts and the hanky-panky by the UK obtained in FOIAed emails.

That judge was Emma Arbuthnot, who is married to a conservative UK politician, Lord James Arbuthnot, who chairs the Advisory Board of Thales (UK), was chair of the Defense Select Committee from 2005 to 2014 and presently serves as minister of state for defense procurement. Arbuthnot’s name happens to appear in WikiLeaks’ archives 58 times. Thales is a prominent defense contractor and symbolizes one type of organization on which WikiLeaks tries to shine a light.  But back to CNN:

“For the last eight years, the UK has refused to either confirm or deny that they have received an extradition request from the US. At the same time, they have refused to provide assurances that Julian will not be extradited to the US if such a request were to be received, and maintained an ever-present vigil of the Embassy, notwithstanding a UN directive to take steps to ensure Julian’s immediate liberty,” Taylor told CNN. “Their silence speaks volumes, particularly in light of recent statements from US officials that Julian’s arrest and extradition are a priority.”

Theresa May had famously said when asked at a Conservative party campaign event in Edinburgh if the UK would now support a request to extradite Assange to the US, Theresa May said: “We look at extradition requests on a case-by-case basis.”  The prime minister had added: “In relation to Julian Assange, any decision that is taken about UK action in relation to him were he to leave the Ecuadorian embassy would be an operational matter for the police.”

Ah, operational matter for the po-po like this, Theresa Thatcher?

@wikileaks   RELEASE: Infra-red footage of covert @JulianAssange “grab team” stake out operation reading mission briefing notes, archive details and video

Now as to various reports of secret indictments, expanded indictments and investigations after WikiLeaks published the CIA Vaults 7 and 8 exploits, which seriously pissed off the spooks, and turned Pompeo and Beauregard Sessions into raging attack dogs…this:

When friend and ally of Julian Assange Randy Credico announced on MSDC that he’d be willing to be interviewed by Adam Schiff over the ‘collusion with Russia’ before the 2016 elections:

“Schiff reportedly said that he would talk to Assange but only if he were in U.S. custody. Assange is currently residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid arrest and possible extradition to the U.S. on allegations of espionage. 

“Our committee would be willing to interview Julian Assange when he is in U.S. custody, not before,” Schiff’s office said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner on Friday.”

…Virtually proving that the UK has made a deal to extradite him to the US, the largest criminal enterprise and exporter of torture on the planet.

I agree with Mike Head’s wsws.org coverage of the CNN warning that this is a big deal:

“Ominously, CNN said Assange’s exit from the embassy “could open a new phase for US investigators eager to find out what he knows.” This indicates that Assange could be subject to forced interrogation or prolonged solitary confinement, like Chelsea Manning, in an attempt to break him.”

What wouldn’t Darth Pompeo and Gina ‘I’ll no longer torture’ Haspell do to him to get him to name names?  Waterboard him?  Give him the Gitmo treatment, maybe inject him with MKULTRA drugs developed deigned to induce enough insanity and pliability that a ‘subject’ is unable to resist answering questions, as long as they don’t go bonkers, that is.  Back to Mike Head:

“Section 794 of that Act, covering supplying information to a wartime enemy, carries the death penalty. Last year, CIA director Mike Pompeo, now the US secretary of state, labelled WikiLeaks as a “hostile non-state intelligence service.” Pompeo declared: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for [cue the laugh track]. It ends now.”

US authorities have stepped up their efforts to silence Assange because of WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of documents that expose the criminal operations of its military and intelligence agencies, including a trove of source codes and files revealing details about CIA hacking tools.

He also mentions the launch the US Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) law suit, naming WikiLeaks and Assange as co-conspirators with Russia and the Trump campaign in a supposed criminal effort to steal the 2016 US presidential election, as well as the Guardian, which originally published some of WikiLeaks’ devastating exposures in 2010, having instigated a filthy campaign to justify Ecuador reneging on Assange’s asylum.

Oddly, or maybe not, the cursed Guardian did publish this piece by Melinda Taylor on their ‘comment is free’ tab: ‘Julian Assange is suffering needlessly. Why not report that?; The media’s coverage of Assange’s arbitrary detention has been shocking, favouring the powerful over the voiceless’, May 18, 2018, theguardian.com

Taylor points to the Guardian’s smearing of Assange, and may not even know of similar yellow journalism from the Intercept and the Daily Beast.

It’s hard to tell at a glance in the Bing cache what CNN’s coverage of Assange has been like, but this is from Feb. 5, 2017:  ‘Julian Assange Gives CNN 48 Hours Before He ‘Destroys Them’, yournewswire.com

What did add some weight to the theory that this piece might be concern trolling is that while trying to watch the CNN video at the top, this one from 2017 featuring the Atlantic’s lying smear merchant Julia Ioffe kept playing on the right sidebar.  It includes some bits from her Atlantic coverage on the ‘meaning of Assange’s DMs with Trump, Jr.

I offer my thanks to Caitlin Johnstone who’d rather handily deconstructed her ‘journalistic malpractice’ by selectively editing the messages, thus entirely changing their meaning, and that:

“Also worth noting is Ioffe’s omission of the fact that we’ve known since July that WikiLeaks had contacted Donald Trump Jr., as well as the fact that Julian Assange’s internet was cut at the time some of the Don Jr. messages were sent, meaning they may have been sent by someone else with access to the WikiLeaks account. (noting: Julian Assange (tweets by #FreeJulian campaign).”

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)